India and Norway jointly hosted a high-level event on Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) at the Monaco Marine Conference. India highlighted its initiatives for MSP like- 

• Digital Public Good SAHAV portal - a GIS-based decision support system providing real-time spatial data, enabling smart planning and marine resilience. 
• Pilot projects at Puducherry and Lakshadweep demonstrating use of MSP in tackling coastal erosion, managing biodiversity under India-Norway MSP collaboration.

About Marine Spatial Planning

• MSP is a public process of analyzing and allocating the spatial and temporal distribution of human activities in marine areas to achieve ecological, economic and social objectives specified through a political process.
• It is a key tool for sustainable ocean governance, offering a science-based framework for optimising ocean resources, protecting biodiversity, and ensuring coastal livelihoods.

CRS data shows lower death registrations in 2022 after 2021 Covid peak.

About CRS:

• CRS is a birth and death registration system.
• Significance of CRS: 
  • It provides data for evidence-based policymaking across sectors like health, population, and education.
  • Enhances governance and delivery of welfare services.
• Legal Framework: 
  • Governed by Registration of Births and Deaths (RBD) Act, 1969 (amended in 2023) to promote uniformity and comparability in the registration across the country.
  • CRS falls under Concurrent List (Entry 30)
• Institutional Structure: Registrar General of India (RGI) at Central level: Coordinates CRS across India.

Researchers created Magnetic Isolation and Concentration cryo-electron microscopy (MagIC), which is an enhanced version of Cryo-EM.

About Cryo -EM

• 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank, and Richard Henderson for developing Cryo-EM
• To study 3D shapes of biological molecules requiring high concentration of the molecule in the sample for imaging.
• Resolution: Cryo-EM achieves resolutions in the 1.5~3.5 angstrom (Å)range.
• Limitation: Difficult to use low-abundance molecules.

About MagIC

• Allows study of samples that are 100 times more dilute.
• Advantage: Enable imaging of rare biological molecules with greater efficiency and less sample volume.

The World Bank approved $250 million in financing for the Inga 3 Hydropower project in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

About Inga 3 

• It is a proposed 11050 MW hydropower project on the Congo River in DRC. 
• It forms part of the Grand Inga Project (aims for total installed capacity of over 42,000 MW of electricity). 

About Congo River

• Countries Covered (6): Cameroon, Central African Republic, DRC, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon.
  • It is home to the world’s largest tropical peatlands.
• Key Features: World’s 2nd largest in terms of flow after the Amazon, and the 2nd longest river in Africa after the Nile, and crosses equator twice. 

Recently, a new species (Losgna Occidentalis) of Parasitic Wasp was discovered in Chandigarh.

About  Parasitic Wasp (Parasitoids)

• Appearance: Small, flying insects with many species being smaller than a millimeter. 
  • Found in multiple families within the insect order Hymenoptera, including the sawflies, bees, and wasps. 
• Key Characteristics: Adults primarily feed on the pollen and nectar of flowers; solitary (do not build hive or report to a queen). 
  • They lay their eggs inside other insects to complete their lifecycle, altering its behaviour and eventually killing them. 
• Significance: Control pests, prevent invasive species, etc. 

Recently, Vibe Coding has emerged as an important tool for coding among the businesses.

About Vibe Coding

• Meaning:   It involves AI transforming the user thinking (expressed using plain speech) into executable code. 
  • In 2024, Around 30% of code at Google and Microsoft was AI-generated, indicating a major shift towards them. 
• Significance: Makes real time suggestion, automates tedious processes, and producing standard codebase structures. 
• Challenges: Technical complexity (requires novel or complex frameworks); code quality and performance issue; debugging  challenges; maintenance and updates, security concerns, etc.  

Recently, researchers have detected and measured the half-life (190 microseconds) of the heaviest proton emitter ¹⁸⁸At (Astatine) isotope, which decayed by emitting a proton. 

• Proton is a subatomic particle with a positive electrical charge. 

About Proton Emission

• It  is the radioactive decay mode that determines the limit of observable proton-rich nuclei for most elements.
  • Hence, for a nucleus with given proton and neutron numbers, if more protons are added, a limit is reached where the last-added proton would simply drip away.  
• It was detected for the first time from ⁵³Co (Cobalt) in the 1970s.

Recently, security forces encountered Moist in anti-Naxal operations in INP.

About Indravati National Park

• Location: Bijapur district, Chhattisgarh.
• Landscape: Constitutes the Indravati Landscape with Bhairamgarh and Pamed Wildlife Sanctuaries. 
• Indravati River (Origin: Dandakaranya range, Odisha): It derives its name from the Indravati River (tributary of Godavari). 
  • Forms the boundary  of the reserve on Northern and Western side, coinciding with the inter-state boundary between Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra. 
• Status: Received the status of a National Park in 1981 and Tiger Reserve in 1983.
• Flora: Trees, Climbers, Shrubs, bamboo, ferns, bryophytes, algae, etc.
• Fauna: Home to one of the last populations of rare wild buffalo.